Garden path sentence

Have you ever read a sentence that seemed to make sense at first, but then you got confused or lost partway through? That's called a garden path sentence. It's like trying to follow a path through a garden, but suddenly the path disappears or leads you the wrong way.

Garden path sentences often have tricky grammar or unusual word choices that can mislead your brain. For example, one garden path sentence might be: "The old man the boat." This sentence seems to say that an old man is doing something to a boat, but when you try to make sense of it, you realize it's not a complete sentence. You might need to add more words, like "sailed" or "fixed," to make it make sense.

Another example of a garden path sentence is: "The horse raced past the barn fell." This sentence starts out like it's telling you about a horse that's running past a barn, but then it takes a strange turn at the end. It's actually saying that the horse that raced past the barn fell down, which is not what you might have expected based on the beginning of the sentence.

Overall, garden path sentences can be tricky, but they're a good reminder to read carefully and pay attention to the words you're reading, so you don't get lost along the way!